HSC exams: Results to be out on time as teachers withdraw protest in Maharashtra

Teachers said they will speed up the evaluation process to ensure results are declared on time

Only 8.6 lakh answer sheets have been corrected so far, instead of 34 lakh.(HT FILE)

Good news for students: Results for the Maharashtra state board exams will be declared on time as around 75,000 examiners and moderators, who were boycotting the assessments for the Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC) exams, withdrew their protest on Wednesday, after negotiations with the state government.

Teachers will start correcting the HSC answer sheets at their usual pace of four to five papers each day from Thursday. They were correcting only one answer sheet daily after the exams began on February 28, as a mark of protest.

This has created a huge backlog as only 8.6 lakh answer sheets have been corrected so far, instead of 34 lakh. Teachers said they will speed up the evaluation process to ensure results are declared on time. “Teachers might get late in submitting English, Hindi and Marathi papers. But we have instructed everyone to double their efforts to make up for lost time,” said Anil Deshmukh, general secretary of the Maharashtra Junior College Teachers Federation, which called off the protest after meeting with Vinod Tawde, education minister.

Tawde issued a statement that most of the teachers’ long-pending demands related to staff approvals and changes in exam pattern have been accepted and will be implemented soon.

Special camps will be held between April 15 and 19 to approve teachers appointed after May 2012, partial government aid has been assured to unaided junior colleges, on the lines of the 20% grant provided to the unaided schools from last year, and as the teachers demand to divide science into two papers, each HSC subject will be discussed with the state board within a month.

This is the fifth consecutive year that the teachers had announced a boycott. Maharashtra state board authorities said that they had requested the government to look into the teachers’ demands so that it doesn’t interfere with the results. “Every year, the teachers use HSC exams to negotiate their demands with the government. They might be justified in doing so, but we have to ensure that it doesn’t interfere with the results,” said Siddeshwar Chandekar, secretary, Mumbai division of Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education.